


Heartbreak comes in threes

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Best Friends, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Minor Lorna Dane/Marcos Diaz, Past Character Death, Post-Season/Series 02, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25816576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: It's been a week since anyone has seen John, and Marcos and Lorna have decided that enough is enough.If only they were ready for what they would find inside, or the revelations that would come to light.
Relationships: Lorna Dane & Marcos Diaz & John Proudstar
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Heartbreak comes in threes

**Author's Note:**

> Poor John. He's been through so much, lost so many people. I just really wanted his loss to be addressed by the people who understand and love him the most, you know?? The first convo between Lorna and Marcos feels a bit weird, but oh well, it all worked out fine in the end.

They had all felt something brewing for a while, but now that it had been a whole week since anyone had seen hide or hair of John, they had to make the painful decision to bring it, as forcibly as was necessary, to a head.

Marcos stood outside John’s apartment door, the one he used to share with Clarice, trying to figure out what he should do. John probably knew he was out there already, anyway. He didn’t think the door would be locked, knowing that they were no longer in any real danger, Besides, if it was locked, Marcos had the key.

It just didn’t feel right for him to barge in, to unlock the door with his key and invade John’s personal space like this. The two of them had barely had any chance to talk lately, with Marcos searching for Lorna and Dawn being born and the Inner Circle causing trouble and the Purifiers cranking up patrols and Jace Turner’s unhealthy obsession… it had been a long and stressful couple of months. They hadn’t exactly had much bonding time.

And now that Clarice was gone, well and truly gone and never coming back… Marco’s knew better than most what that meant.

“Are you going to go in?” Lorna asked as she came up beside him, arms crossed.

“It doesn't feel right,” Marcos replied. “I don’t want to barge in.”

“He’s probably expecting you,” she said. Marcos knew she was right. John’s hearing was unbelievable even when he wasn’t trying, and he knew that he’d been standing at John’s front door, hand poised to knock, for the better portion of ten minutes and John had most likely caught a whiff of him by now. “What are you so worried about?”

He offered her a vague gesture. “It just feels wrong.”

“But it’s  _ John _ ,” Lorna said as if that made all the difference, and before Marcos could react, she was reaching around him and with the flick of her wrist, the latch was shifted out of the way and the door was unlocked. “After you.”

Now that he no longer had a choice, Marcos reluctantly turned the handle and pushed open the door.

It looked exactly how Marcos had expected it to. It was very dark, almost pitch black despite being the middle of the day, and all the blinds and curtains were drawn over the windows. There were dirty dishes in the sink but there were more cans of non-perishables in the bin than dishes in the skin, items they used to save as rations back when there were more of them to take care of, like refried beans and soup, and empty packets of jerky and protein or granola bars. 

There were clothes hanging over the back of a chair, bloodstained and peppered with bullet holes, and Marcos strained to remember the last time John had worn them. On the small coffee table crammed between the couch decorated with colourful, funky pillows that screamed ‘Clarice’ and the TV, were case files of mutants in detention centres and prisons and forced into Sentinal Service programs as if John had been searching for new recruits for the Mutant Underground 2.0. Amidst it all was a tall vase filled with long decayed flowers, the petals wilted and dead on the tabletop, the stems dead and broken.

Zingo slept in the corner, curled up on her dog-bed with a hole in it and a tuff of white stuffing poking out from where the make-shift stitches someone tried to fix it with had failed, and she opened one eye when they walked in, taking note of their presence, before curling back up and falling asleep again like they weren’t even there.

The sound of running water drew their attention to the bathroom and Lorna moved to stand next to Marcos against the kitchen bench as John emerged from the bathroom, looking dishevelled and shabby. “Oh,” he said, not sounding surprised at all. “I was beginning to wonder how much longer you were going to stand out there like that. I had bets on half an hour.”

He looked, frankly, terrible.

His hair hung limply around his shoulders in matted tangles, greasy and unkempt, tucked behind his ears. His eyes looked haunted like he had recently witnessed his own demise, and they were shadowed by dark bruises as if he hadn’t slept in days, if not weeks. His lips were cracked and his skin was pale, and the usual noble way he held himself was replaced with slumped shoulders and hands in his pants pockets.

Marcos looked him over with pursed lips but decided not to comment, yet. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t sure if you were home or not.”

“It’s not like I have anywhere else to go,” John shrugged. He jerked his chin to Lorna. “Where’s Dawn?”

“She’s with Andy and Esme today. They wanted to take her on a trip around town, show her our new home. We’ve all been cooped up too long,” Lorna replied. She waved at the coffee table and the scattered dead petals on long discarded paperwork. “What’s with the flowers?”

Blinking, John turned to see what she was referring to and a hint of recognition crossed his features. “Oh, Clarice brought them before…uh,” he gulped. “I haven’t thought about getting rid of them yet. I probably should though, before they make a mess. Thankfully, she had half a mind to buy ones that don’t smell, so I haven’t even noticed them.”

“Uh-huh,” Lorna said, believing part of his statement. She reached over and plucked one of the unopened cans from the counter. “And what are you doing with the… rations? Are these rations?”

The conversation seemed to exhaust John before it had really even begun as if he knew what was coming. “I haven’t felt like cooking. There are so many dishes, so much mess for one person and I never end up eating all the left-overs. There’s no point to it. This is easier. And besides, it’s not like we need them anymore, anyway. If we need to go on the run again, we’ll just stock up on new stuff. It’s not like we’re going to run out and starve.”

Running a heavy hand down his face, Marcos pinched the bridge of his nose. “Come on, man. Don’t do this to yourself.”

“What?” John retorted.

“Just-” Marcos gestured around the room, at the dead flowers, the rations in the bin, at John. “-all this!” he sighed. “Look, John, I know that you miss her-”

“Don’t,” John warned, face hardening, voice sharp.

Not expecting that harsh a tone, Marcos reeled, caught off guard. Lorna filled in his silence like she always did. “Don’t  _ what _ , John? Talk about Clarice? Maybe you should talk about it. Maybe you need to.”

But John was just shaking his head. “This hasn’t got anything to do with Clarice.”

Their surprise was palpable as the room fell silent. “It doesn’t?” Marcos managed when he finally found his voice.

John seemed to deflate, the fight leaving him through his toes, “I mean, I miss her. Of course, I miss her. I won’t even lie to you about it, and I don’t know why I would,” he gestured hopelessly. “I can’t move on even if I wanted to. Not just her clothes in our drawers and her soap in the shower but her very  _ being _ . I can still see her in here like a mirage, dancing in the kitchen or sitting on the bed. I can smell her perfume, her soap, her shampoo. She still feels like she’s here as if her memory is stuck within the folds of time and space. But with my mutation… it just doesn’t let me forget,” he laughed with no humour. “And you used to say I was lucky.”

While they understood when he was trying to tell them, they knew that there was more he wasn’t saying. “And you’re trying to say… what?” Marcos tried. “That she’s still here, somehow? John, you said so yourself. You watched her die. She’s not coming back.”

Before Marcos had even finished speaking, John was shaking his head again, reaching up to push stray strands back behind his ears. “No, that’s not what I mean. It’s just… I’m so tired of this happening, you know? So damn sick of it.”

“Sick of what, John?” Lorna asked, but the tone of her voice said that she already knew. 

The look in John’s eyes said the same thing. “I’m sick of losing the people I care about,” John answered. “Everyone I love dies.”

“That’s not true though, is it?” Marcos looked between John and Lorna, waiting for an answer that never came. “Is it?”

“Gus died twice. Once when we left him behind to suffer and the other when he died in my arms, wasting his last breath to apologise to me,” John’s voice was tight. “I let Sonya get captured by Sentinal, and she died, scared and alone in some government facility. And now Clarice,” he glanced away. “All three of them are dead, and none of them left behind a body that we could bury.”

“Oh John,” Lorna looked like she wanted to surge forward and wrap her arms around him in a tight embrace, but she had been gone so long now, and so many things had changed in that time that she was no longer sure if a hug from her would be welcome. She settled for gripping the edge of the counter. “I’m sorry.”

“Look, I don’t want your sympathy or your pity, alright?” John waved his hand about in a vague gesture. “I get it. People die all the time. Mutants die every day. You move on.”

“You’re allowed to miss them, John,” Lorna said gently, “Just because they’re dead doesn’t mean that you have to forget they existed.”

“What about every other mutant we’ve lost to this battle?” John retorted. “It’s not fair to them if I spend my entire life mourning Gus and Sonya and Clarice when I can’t even remember their names.”

“I’m  _ sure  _ you can remember their names,” Lorna almost scoffed. “Last I checked, your memory wasn’t  _ that  _ bad.”

“I can’t though, is the thing,” John sighed. “It’s an impossible task. There’s so many of them that I couldn’t do it if I tried, and believe me, I  _ have  _ tried.”

John just looked so god damn  _ tired  _ that Marcos couldn’t really recognise him. He had never seen this side of him before. Was this the John that nobody ever saw, that he hid locked away until he was alone and could finally let it out without the prying eyes of other mutants, young and old and all looking up to him? Apparently, Marcos was one of those, as the sight before him was something he hadn’t seen in all the years they’d known each other. 

A sudden, irrational thought crossed his mind and his body bloomed into a panic, and he spared a glance at Lorna to see if she had reached the same, hopelessly irrational, conclusion. “Uh, John, do you mind if I take a quick look at wherever you keep you pain killers and medication and stuff?”

The look John sent him was one Marcos couldn’t decipher, but he thought he might have seen something akin to… hurt? It didn’t matter. He had to know. “Bathroom,” he waved behind him. “The cabinet above the sink. It’ll be mostly empty other than what Clarice left. You know that stuff doesn’t work on me unless I take a whole chemist worth.”

“No worries. I believe you, but I’m still going to check though. You know how it is,” Marcos replied as he moved pashed John and into the bathroom.

He didn’t hesitate to check the medicine cabinet above the sink the moment he stepped foot in the room, reaching across and pulling it open before he was fully in front of it. True to his word, the shelves were barren of anything but a couple of vitamin bottles, almost empty, and a first-aid kit pushed into a corner, probably empty. Marcos checked the bin, just to assure himself that there was no evidence discarded in the bin. Not that John was the kind of guy to do that. It didn’t hurt to be sure, though.

Marcos didn’t know John back then. In fact,  _ nobody  _ knew John back then. But Marcos had heard the stories, had heard the dramatic retellings by those who had paid good money to watch those fights. He could only imagine how good John was at what he did. The best fighter those underground fighting rings had ever seen, someone who wasn’t in it for fame or reputation, someone who fought fight after fight and won every time.

Nobody spoke about that time. Nobody wanted to remember it. But it wasn’t as I anybody could even if they wanted to. All the people and mutants who had been there were long gone or had been dead for longer than they’d been alive, and Marcos really knew nothing bout it besides what he’d been told. Lorna knew more than anyone, considering she had been there right after everything with him had begun to plateau and had been there from the start of their mutant resistance. Despite that, he knew that she didn’t want to relive that time of their lives and that she didn’t want to witness the beginning of John’s downward spiral, something she had blessedly missed the first time.

Despite how strong John was, how tough and brave and determined he was, Marcos didn’t want him to fall down that deep, dark hole again, and knew just how real the possibility was, especially after this.

Satisfied that the cabinets were clear, Marcos left the bathroom as quickly as he entered it, only to be met by the heart-warming sight of John and Lorna standing together in the centre of the room, entwined in a tight embrace.

“You haven’t lost  _ everyone _ , John,” Lorna was saying. “You’ve still got me and Marcos. We’re not going anywhere.”

“You did, though,” John replied. “You left. I did lose you.”

There was a long moment before she spoke. “I’m here now though, right? I came back.”

“Yeah,” he said as he rested his chin on her crown and she folded into his side like a puzzle piece, fitting under his arm. “You did.” He turned when Marcos returned, eyebrows raised. “Satisfied? Did you find what you were looking for?

“Yep. Much better,” Marcos could merely shrug. There was no anger or hurt in John’s voice, only exasperation and mild impatience. “You know how it is. I gotta check, man. I expect you to do the same for me.”

“I know, I get it,” John held his hand up to silence him, still cradling Lorna to his side. The entire situation was so comical and desperate that Marcos wanted to laugh.

“Listen, John, I know that these past few weeks have been hard for all of us. You especially,” Marcos reached up to run his hand through his hair before rubbing at the back of his neck. He never thought that he’d have to have this conversation in his lifetime. It was usually the other way around. “You’re family to us, John. Always have and always will be. So if you ever need us…”

“I know where to find you,” John finished Marcos’s sentence, voice definite and firm. They had said that same phrase to each other over this past year that the words started to sound like a broken record long ago. He tilted his head like a puppy distracted by a rattling sound in the distance and glanced over Lorna’s head to the door. “Andy and Esme are back. You should go and meet them. Dawn sounds fussy.”

“I mean, we don’t have to,” Lorna protested, pulling away from John’s side just far enough to look up at him. “I’m sure Esme and Andy have it covered. We could stay for a bit.”

But John was shaking his head, a small smile curing at the corners of his mouth. “Nah, you should go. It sounds like it’s starting to get bad. It might be the beginning stages of a tantrum. I think she’s pretty tired. 

True to his word, the hallway was filled with the loud, piercing sounds of a wailing baby and the hushed tones of both Andy and Esme trying to shush her. Marcos frowned between John and the door. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, man,” John extracted himself from Lorna, much to both of their disappointment. “Go on. I don’t need a babysitter. Save that for your actual baby. I’ll be fine.”

They hated that they knew he was right. They had a baby they needed to tend to. Lorna gave John another hug, reaching a hand up to tug at his hair so he could lower himself down enough for her to place a kiss on his cheek. Then she was out the front door with a flick of her wrist and into the hallway, cooing Dawn’s name in a soothing voice.

Marcos hesitated a little longer, taking his time to wrap his arms securely around John, his chin on his shoulder, his hand cupping the back of his head, John’s hands coming up and wrapping around Marcos after a moment of surprise. He didn’t mention the way John stunk or the wet feeling of his unwashed hair beneath his hand, and especially not the way John held him a little too tightly and for a little too long. What he did say, however, was, “I love you, brother. You know that, right?”

“I know,” John said as he eventually pulled away. Marcos left his hand on his shoulder. “I love you too.”

Zingo whined from her corner of the room.

Reluctantly, Marcos pulled away, sticking his hands in his pockets as he made his way to the door with his head down, resisting the urge to turn around, and it was only when the door shut behind him that he let the pretence slip and stared hotly at the door, wanting to burn it to cinders.

Ultimately, he knew that there was nothing he could do, and Marcos was forced to turn his back on the door and his best friend inside it.

**Author's Note:**

> God, I hate Clarice's name. Not really. But I grew up with PJO and the character in there is spelt "Clarisse" and it drives me crazy whenever I realize I've done it wrong


End file.
